Borussia Mönchengladbach's Coaching Crisis: Seeking a Solution
Borussia Mönchengladbach are staring at the table and seeing a number they never wanted to be near: 17th. Three games, three defeats, 3:12 goals. A 0:5 collapse in Freiburg that cost Eugen Polanski his job and stripped away any illusions about a gentle transition season.
This is now an emergency.
Four million to fix a crisis
Inside the club, the tone has hardened. According to Bild, sporting director Rouven Schröder has been handed a coaching budget of around four million euros. That figure says plenty about the mood at Borussia-Park. Gladbach are not shopping in the bargain bin. If the right coach is under contract elsewhere, they are prepared to pay compensation.
It opens the door to a name that keeps surfacing: Brian Priske of Sparta Prague. The Dane, 49, is reported by Tipsbladet to be high on Gladbach’s list. His exact contract length in Prague remains unclear, but that hardly seems to bother the Foals. They want a coach with authority, someone who can walk into a fractured dressing room and set the tone from day one.
Priske is not alone on the shortlist.
A crowded shortlist, a narrow margin for error
Bild’s reporting paints a picture of a broad search. Alexander Blessin, most recently at St. Pauli, is in the frame. So is Horst Steffen, currently at SV Werder Bremen, and Christian Eichner of Karlsruher SC. Each name offers a slightly different profile: development coach, tactician, motivator.
And then there is Steffen Baumgart.
Officially with Union Berlin most recently, Baumgart brings a very different energy. Cap on his head, veins bulging on the touchline, he is the antithesis of a quiet transitional figure. The club hierarchy knows that. Alongside Schröder, former sporting director Roland Virkus is heavily involved in the process, working from within the Scouting & Recruitment department in the specialised area of “coach scouting” since July. Together they are weighing up not just systems and CVs, but personalities.
Baumgart, in that sense, is a statement candidate.
The Köln man in the Gladbach frame
His past makes the link all the more explosive. Before Union and HSV, Baumgart stood on the other side of the Rhine derby divide, coaching none other than Gladbach’s arch-rivals 1. FC Köln. And he did not just pass through.
In his first season in charge, he dragged the Billy Goats to a remarkable seventh-place finish, punching a ticket to the Conference League and reviving a club that had been drifting. Ninety-eight competitive matches later, the relationship ended in December 2023 after a sporting downturn, but the emotional footprint remained. Köln fans loved him for his honesty, his intensity, his refusal to hide.
Now that same figure is being seriously discussed in Mönchengladbach.
The rivalry history would usually be a red flag. Here, it is almost a selling point. Decision-makers at Gladbach are said to value exactly what Baumgart brings: experience at the sharp end of the Bundesliga, a coach who has ridden waves of euphoria and slumps, and crucially, someone who has already studied Gladbach in depth. He would not arrive needing weeks of video work just to understand the squad. He knows the club, the stadium, the pressure.
This is not a romantic project anymore. It is about survival and direction.
Polanski’s short era, brutal numbers
The brutality of the numbers ended Polanski’s tenure. The 40-year-old had stepped up as interim coach last season after Gerardo Seoane’s dismissal and earned a promotion to the top job. Even before this campaign kicked off, though, he was under scrutiny.
Across 29 matches as head coach, Polanski averaged just 1.10 points per game. Respectable for a caretaker, not enough for a club that still sees itself in the upper half of the Bundesliga. When the new season opened with three straight defeats and that 0:5 in Freiburg, the thin layer of patience evaporated.
Gladbach now sit on zero points, with only HSV worse off at 0:12 goals. The table does not lie in mid-September; it shouts.
A club on the clock
So the hunt is on, with four million euros and a shortlist that stretches from Prague to Berlin. Priske, Blessin, Steffen, Eichner, Baumgart – different paths, one shared task: to stop a slide before it becomes the defining story of Gladbach’s season.
The Foals wanted a new chapter. What they have instead is a countdown.
